870 weak ejection

B

bcrash15

New member
I took my new 870 express out today and was slightly concerned with its ejection performance. It seems to extract fine and will eject unfired shells a couple feet from the gun, but fired hulls seem to just dribble out of the action. They often barely even clear the receiver cutout (when others were shooting and not pumping hard, sometimes they wouldn’t fully clear). I should be pumping it hard enough, I did some tests where I pumped REALLY hard and the result was about the same. Every once in a while, one will eject like I think the gun should, but mostly the shells just kind of popped out of the action and fell basically straight down. Any thoughts on what I should give a once over before reporting to the nearest smithy?
 
I would pull it apart and give whole thing a good cleaning first before anything else and then go shoot it again. Make sure to give the chamber a good scrubbing and get the factory preservative cleaned out.
 
The first thing to check is the extractor assembly in the bolt.
I had several 870's in for weak ejection and in most cases the extractor spring and plunger or their tunnel in the bolt were fouled with carbon or rust (I had a brand new Police Model in with a rusty extractor tunnel).

Make sure the extractor is free to move in and out, and has plenty of spring pressure. You can give it a drop or two of CLP Breakfree if it's sluggish.
If that doesn't do it, I'd be on the phone to Remington to send it in for repair.
 
Bet you're using a steel based hull. Some of these, oft the Gun Clubs from Remington or the generic Winchester target jobs are harder to eject.

Try different ammo(With a brass base) and see if the problem persists.
 
Thanks for the info guys! I shot various shells, both steel/brass and high/low brass, I don't remember any of them functioning significantly differently. Going to give a detailed cleaning and check the extractor. Could there be anything amiss with the ejector itself or does that pretty much either work or break?

Maromero said:
If your 870 is suffring from weak ejection problems I suggest a little blue pill.
Click to expand...
Now I can't read my original post without laughing. :D
 
On heavily worn 870s sometimes the ejector breaks the front corner off. Run your finger over it. It should be smoothly rounded.

Do a deep clean. Sometimes the preservatives that Remington uses get a bit sticky. Take them all off and relube. See if that helps...
 
Hi again, back with update. I did a pretty good clean, I actually could tell I was removing some more gunk than before, especially from the chamber area. But the gun is still fumbling the empties. Maybe this is a normal behavior I dunno, it seems like it should eject farther.

Here is a video I made of a few ejection cycles with an empty to see what you guys think. If you listen closely you can hear a hollow thud when the hull is clearing, I think that is the hulls hitting the top of the receiver cutout and being deflected downwards, I do not recall hearing this sound on most 870s. Any thoughts?

870 video
 
Try a bit of polishing in the chamber. Chuck up a dowel with 4/0 steel wool wrapped around it in a variable speed drill. A few passes will remove any gunk and smooth machining marks. Do the forcing cone in front of the chamber also while you're in there.
 
Thanks, will do! Forcing cone is a good idea too, a problem there might explain why it only happens with fired hulls.
 
I don't think the chamber has anything to do with this problem.OP said no problems with extraction and on the 870's and Mossberg 500's I have seen with extraction problems due to chamber condition when the hull was cleared by yanking hard or smacking butt on ground the hulls were flung out with authority and the fired hulls would not go back into the chamber easily like his do in the video.B crash15 how does the ejector spring look in your gun?
 
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